


Burning Brightly

by beetle



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: "Temporarily" is defined very loosely, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst, Backstory, Developing Friendships, Emotionally Repressed, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Initially one-sided attraction, M/M, Minor Bastien de Ghislain/Vivienne, Possibly Epistolary in parts, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Pre-Dragon Age: Origins, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Temporarily Unrequited Love, The Inquisitor luvs Viv, The burn is SLOW if it goes as planned, Two decades worth of it, Viv luvs Bastien, Vivienne and Dorian being bitches together, Vivienne and Nicoline being bitches together, Women who still carry the wounds they received as girls, patience - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23433748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: A much earlier meeting between the Inquisitor and the Enchanter to the Imperial Court of Orlais. And all the meetings, thereafter.
Relationships: Bastien de Ghislain/Vivienne, Dorian Pavus & Vivienne, Female Adaar/Vivienne, Female Inquisitor & Iron Bull, Female Inquisitor & Josephine Montilyet, Female Inquisitor/Vivienne, Female Mage Inquisitor/Vivienne, Inquisitor/Vivienne, Nicoline de Ghislain & Vivienne
Comments: 14
Kudos: 9





	Burning Brightly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [0Rocky41_7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/0Rocky41_7/gifts), [zeesqueere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeesqueere/gifts).

> **Notes:** Takes place before, during, and after Inquisition, and Trespasser DLC. Mildly AU before and during canon, more so “post-canon.” Slow burn with lots of backstory. SPOILERS. Mature, so far, but will eventually get explicit. The burn, however, _is slow._ Any warn-ables and tag-ables will be noted in chapter notes as well as tags. Also. . . .  
  
**“[Female Adaar Inquisitor - Mage: LittleBig Glory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=103YENxDI28&t=1s).”** beetle comma-the, Youtube. April 1, 2020. **[5:18]** A clip of one of my Adaar Inquisitors, a female mage, about whom I'm writing fanfic. The clips I upload of playthrough will be mostly to get a better feel for her.  
  
  
And lastly, but not leastly . . . thanks to [0Rocky41_7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/0Rocky41_7) and [Zeesqueere](https://zeesqueere.tumblr.com/) for content that inspired me to get back to this fic and finally **be about it**. Do check out their Works and Tumblrs. IT IS THE CONTENT YOU SHOULD BE HERE FOR. Or . . . THERE for.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fire and Air meets Air and Lightning. Or, twenty-five years before the advent of the Breach, fourteen years old LittleBig Glory, the future Herald of Andraste and Inquisitor, meets twenty years old Senior Enchanter Vivienne de Fer at the Ghislain Estate.  
  
Considering that LittleBig Glory is there to assassinate her, Vivienne is quite the gracious and charming hostess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Backstory. Takes place before DA: Origins, in 9:17, DA. Rated M, for now. SPOILERS.

**Ghislain Estate, Orlais; 9:17, DA**

“The evening’s _divertissements_ continue unabated! My enthusiasm and appreciation know no bounds. . . .”

A mocking, cultured voice—speaking not in Orlesian, with its fancy, mushy-soupy vowels and ridiculous, slippery-fancy consonants, but purring in precise, Southern Marches-accented Trade tongue—issues from the shadow-shrouded large bed in the corner of the opulent bedroom of the opulent suite. LittleBig Glory freezes. She is instantly breath-held and wide-eyed . . . instantly _dizzy_ from an even mix of terror and relief.

She’s been caught, and it’s _done_, then. All she’ll lose will be absolutely everything. But then, LittleBig Glory’s _everything_ has never _really_ been much of _anything at all_. And certainly nothing much these days. Not with _tama_ dead these many months. . . .

The waves of despair that knock LittleBig Glory down figuratively and instantly are nothing new. And yet, they never lessen in impact with time. In the fifteen months, two weeks and six days since Captain Fisher’s letter had arrived, notifying her that her only family had gone even farther from her reach than any assignment had ever sent him, she’s hoped and fought to put it at even a tiny remove.

LittleBig Glory is fair to middling, as fighters go—more brute-strength and rage, than strategy and skill, but hardly a liability in most conflagrations. But despair is an opponent whose momentum never flags and whose hits only grow stronger with familiarity.

The setback such hits offer is enough to throw her off her game and distract her for long enough to lose all chance at escape—even a quick sprint for the window, and a dive out into the thorny rosebushes two stories below (survivable, but agonizingly so). And even that second of wavering is long enough for the confident-amused voice to say a single, sibilant word, in a negligent and assured manner. The word is more than sound, it’s a rush that makes blood run redder and skin tingle—that forms a cold ball of fear in her gut and anchors her bodily to the spot she occupies.

Her ax and stiletto clatter to the Rivaini-style rug, the former with a muffled _chunk-thud_. LittleBig Glory _knows_, without a moment of consideration or realization, that she truly is as good as dead. Or perhaps a bit worse-off, still.

_Likely_ worse-off, still. And more than a _bit_, because . . . of course.

_Of course_.

The target is a bloody _mage_.

Of-bloody-Maker-damned-_course_, by the time oh-so-clever _LittleBig Glory_ takes it into her horned brick of a skull to question this drawn-out clusterfuck of a job—which she should’ve _never_ taken in the first bloody-damned-place—her days-late instinct to run is of no avail.

The momentary petrification that had come with startlement has become _literal_ petrification. She can’t move a single muscle—and she has quite a lot of those, so . . . total immobility of them _all_ is unprecedented and rather horrifying.

Still, she’s able to at least breathe and blink, so it could be worse. And, again: will likely _get_ worse, once the targeted mage finishes toying with her or torturing answers out of her.

LittleBig Glory is surprised when a hopeless sigh escapes her, entirely without her own permission or intent. Perhaps sighs count as involuntary movement, as breathing and blinking do, if one hasn’t _intended_ to make them. (Just one of the ways magic is bloody odd, and barse-ackward, too—cock-eyed and cack-handed as a clock that chimes the quarter-hour and runs backwards, to boot.) She had certainly _not_ intended to show any such emotion—any emotion at all—to _anyone_. Especially an enemy. _Tama_ had taught her from an early age to _pull it all in and keep it there_, as losing her temper might mean loosing certain other things, as well. Which further meant them getting killed or captured by the human _arvaaradim_.

Or far . . . _far_ worse, than anything . . . taken by _arvaaradim_ loyal to the Qun. Then being shackled in every way possible, including a mask over her face . . . and her tongue removed if conditioning isn’t enough to make her obedient and compliant.

“You are fire and air, _imekari_, and you have the heart of a dragon,” her _tama_ had said more than once, and he hadn’t been a man who’d repeated himself or often needed to. But this . . . this, he’d said for her sake. So that, once he was gone—something he’d seemed to anticipate and which she’d never been able to stomach even as an abstract—she could fend for herself as ferociously as _he_ had fended for her. As the only person who’d ever _loved her_ had fended for her.

“The blood of dragons runs true and strong, in you. _No part of you is not your own. No part of you could ever be theirs_,” he’d say, too, staring off into whatever distance had been convenient. His dark, inscrutable gaze would be steady and melancholy, as always, and his brow deeply furrowed. But his mouth, wide and thin-lipped, had been turned markedly down and ticking the tiniest bit . . . as if he’d been holding back some great, aching exclamation or expression. And whenever his eyes had ticked back to her at last, he’d only be frowning more, and his lips would tremble even more. “If they know of you, they will hunt you. If they catch you, they will bind you until it kills you. Or they will kill you, outright. For any _arvaarad_ will know this when he sees you: You will only ever belong to yourself and _never_ to the Qun. As I have never belonged. But _you_ are stronger than I, _imekari_. The Qun _would_ break you once it realized it could not _bend you to itself_. This must not happen.”

It’d likely been the longest thing her _tama_ had ever said in one sitting, and he’d said it to her increasingly after she’d grown old enough to understand danger. Though she’d been hearing it since infancy, she’d always suspected, and had found the words, said in his low, under-used voice, as comforting as a lullaby. _Terrifying_, as she’d come to understand more about the dangers those who would’ve had cause to hunt them had posed . . . but comforting, too.

Coming from her _tama_—who’d always been so strong and fearless and stoic—such deep, unyielding concern had meant _love_, and in the only way she had known to recognize it.

He’d done his best to arm her and make her as strong as he could. To teach her to hide and defend herself, and to be as unnoticed as a horned, gray-skinned, six-plus-foot child _could be_, in a world of humans, dwarves, and elves.

Only for her to throw it all away on something she’d been too stupid to recognize had been a setup and suicide-mission. Proving that, as ever, she is at best expendable to those around her. And at worst . . . well, _tama_ had eventually learned what he’d already surely known. . . .

In memory of him and atonement for failing him so greatly and so many times . . . LittleBig Glory _pulls it all in_ and does her best to _keep it there_. Even if she dies, here and now, she will not die a puling, pathetic coward and bawl-baby.

Inasmuch as _tama_ could have a legacy through her, she would not have _that_ be the legacy.

“A Tal-Vashoth assassin,” the mage says with more round, relaxed amusement, and a slither of fine cloth as she swings long, smooth legs—as shapely and unmarred as cunningly, lovingly-carved lignum—from under her covers, to the floor. LittleBig Glory is helpless but to watch as he she stands with unhurried grace that’s as much performance as utility, and pads away from the umbra’d nest of her four-post bed. Another word and the fireplace flares to sudden, alarming light and heat that LittleBig Glory can feel. The light, itself, though closer to herself than to the mage, throws the whole room into bright relief.

Including the mage, who crosses her bedchamber in a slow, majestic meander that is somehow threatening. It contributes to the growing ice-ball in LittleBig Glory’s stomach. Planted as she is between a tall, spotless mirror and some sort of fancy garderobe, she feels more sculpture than assassin. And she really _is_ more of the former (and a common street-thug, as well), than she is or ever will be an _assassin_.

All around them, the opulent bedchambers grow brighter, still, as if half a hundred candles are stirring to life. As the mage moves closer from the other side of the cavernous bedchamber, LittleBig Glory can only note the details of her, being literally helpless to do anything else. The mage is tall . . . for a human woman, but still much shorter than LittleBig Glory—by more than half a foot, if LittleBig Glory’s horns are taken into account.

The mage’s bearing is striking, and _regal_, as is captured in the hastily, but accurately sketched likeness LittleBig Glory had been shown before being turned loose on the Ghislain Estate. That same self-possessed and assured smile, the same keen and dangerous eyes, and the same particular and meticulous features. It’s the same face that LittleBig Glory had committed to memory—easily, for whatever that had been worth—before her handler had sent her forth. But there’s an unexpected candor to the mage’s current expression that the sketch had not captured or even hinted at.

It makes her intimidating and magnetic beauty both gentler and sharper. _Easier_, though some of that is the mage’s unexpected _youth_. For though her manner is as gracious as that of any well-bred arts-matron or experienced courtesan, her face is so very _young_ . . . unlined and disarmingly winsome in its obvious curiosity.

This person—talented and clearly sharp—is so many unanticipated things, all at once. Not what LittleBig Glory would have expected of a duke’s bit of sweet. And nothing about the mage seems sweet, so far . . . though, her simple sleeping attire of a silken, thin-strapped, cream-colored shift with no adornment but for a bit of lace at the décolletage and the hem, makes LittleBig Glory's stomach settle a bit. Only to churn far harder. Said hem stops just above the mage’s meticulous, unmarred knees.

“_My_,” the mage tsks, half-laughing and two-thirds exasperated. She’s only a few yards away—much less than a stone’s throw, had LittleBig Glory stones or the wherewithal to throw them. “A _baby_ Tal-Vashoth assassin, at that. How _uniquely quaint_.”

At the mage’s expressed delight, another sound escapes LittleBig Glory’s ticking throat and locked jaw. It’s closer to a snarl than a sigh, and the mage laughs, wry and condescending.

“You’ll pardon my bluntness, my _dear_, but I _had_ thought that my detractors, even the ones who consider me worth only little regard and possessed of similar potential, would have sent a more . . . seasoned throat-cutter. And several, at that. But instead, they’ve . . . sent _you_. Which may mean that whoever _your_ detractors are, they’re far more efficacious than my own,” the mage notes with a sigh, her voice only barely tinged with disappointment. And, of course, the genteel _ennui_ particular to Orlesian high society and practitioners of its _Game_. “As it is, making an example of _you_ shall give me pity-pangs for at least a week, you poor, _dear_ . . . _doomed_ child!”

Were she able to, LittleBig Glory would snarl and growl and sneer. As it is, her eyes throb, hot and wet in their sockets. She’s surprised they don’t simply melt right out of them from the heat of her rage and the futility of her despair. Tears, scalding and frustrated, shamed and _shameful,_ run down her pallid, numb face and these moments seem to be dragging out slowly. Yet, they also race by like the worst sort of nightmares. Like every moment of this mission and the fifteen months before it.

LittleBig Glory has never slept either long or well in her fourteen years. She’s slept worse, still, since _tama_ was killed. Thus, her experience with nightmares is both detailed and varied. The ones she lives every time she sleeps—and sees on the backs of her eyelids during prolonged blinks—could hardly be made worse by wakeful, intentional murders.

And if so . . . what of that? “Getting worse,” is the nature of all life and all things.

Certainly, it had helped any brief pangs of conscience that her very first assignment had been some useless duke’s useless _mistress_—no guilt to be felt, there. The mission had never been more than _surviving to fulfill the mission_ . . . or failing and dying.

For, LittleBig Glory isn’t sentimental about survival. It is simply what one does until one can’t, anymore. If LittleBig Glory’s _can’t_ is to come at the age of fourteen winters, then so be it. She doesn’t enjoy life so well, thus far, that she sees a point to being fanatical about keeping it.

Being alive is simply another habit—what one _does_ and what one _is_, rather than what one prefers or enjoys.

And, had LittleBig Glory been able to carry out her first assignment without getting caught, the fact that the useless duke’s useless mistress had been a _mage_ would have only meant more rare and fleeting satisfaction for her.

LittleBig Glory doesn’t care for mages. Doesn’t care for _magic_. Hates and fears it deeply, and with good reason. It’s been taking from her all that she’s valued and loved—or could have—even from before she’d been born. Taking and taking and breaking down every bit of her, until even her _tama had been taken _and there’d been no one and nothing left, at last, for it to take.

Nothing but LittleBig Glory’s life, that is.

But whatever else it means, death means that LittleBig Glory’s days of bowing down and buckling under just to barely scrape by are done, just as she is. After a lifetime, and through struggle and strife, there’s nowhere left to run, and nothing left to do—no one left to _fight for_.

No _tama_, no _no-one_.

If death is her lot tonight, and at the hands of this _mage_ and _of magic_, then she will face it head-on . . . look it in the eyes until the life leaves her own. Let it see her fear and hatred and defiance—her repudiation of it, even at the last, and hopefully choke on them.

The mage chuckles again, as genteel and aloofly amused as everything else about her. The warm sound of it makes LittleBig Glory blink and recalls her to the moment. Back to the very near, smiling-regal mage. She looks even younger up-close but more dangerous, somehow. “My innocent, _obvious_ infant . . . you telegraph your rage—and your age, or lack thereof—so . . . obviously. And so _wastefully_. You’re really more of a hired leg-breaker, than an assassin, aren’t you?”

It’s truth—and probably not a difficult truth to suss, all things considered. And even if it hadn’t been, LittleBig Glory is hardly in any state to complain about inaccuracies, real or imagined.

She blinks again, and the warmth of another tear rolling down her cold face is so startling, it forces a soft, strangled sob from her immobilized throat and more tears from her stupid, traitor-eyes. She has looked death in the face with some frequency, and even more so since she’s been on her own. Every time before this one, she’d felt a mix of restless rage and the welling of some great furor within herself that railed against such a fate.

That cyclone is present here and now, as well, but its tenor has changed from rage and frustration, to hopelessness and disappointment so far beyond what she knows, the realization steals the breath from her. It leaves her fully numbed, so that she can only again console herself that at least it’s at last _over_. That all the rue and sense of disenfranchisement in Thedas would change nothing. The grief, the fear, the rage, all of it, is done. Over and done. All that’s needed is to lie down and be still, after facing it with the dignity and strength _tama_ would have expected from the child he’d raised.

She refocuses her tear-blurry, but stony, towering gaze—_tama’s_ gaze—on the mage’s stunning face and on her dangerous, almond-shaped eyes. They are, respectively, strikingly burnished and flickering eerily, thanks to the firelight. _She_ seems to be gleaming-smooth and faintly shimmering.

_More magic_, LittleBig Glory supposes without interest or even resentment at power wasted on pointless vanity. Mage, or not, the woman _is_ the mistress of a duke and clearly a _significant_ player in the Game, herself.

But, after a few smugly satisfied seconds, the _mage’s eyes_ are no longer aloof and amused. They’re serious and intent. _Intense_. As piercing as hot needles in winter-chilled flesh. With a regal and slight tilt of her head, curiosity seems to overrule her vicious delight and smugness. To replace it with a keener, more measuring sensibility, and obvious consideration which settles on an expression that’s gentler—though, not much—and incredulous.

Surprised and dismayed.

Pitying . . . and _entirely_ unwelcome in its sudden understanding.

“Oh, my _dear_,” the mage begins, sounding truly flabbergasted. Her eyes are wide, and she bends her slender, but strong-looking arms akimbo, anchoring elegant hands on generous hips. “How-_ever_ did the templars miss _you, _when you burn_ so very brightly_?”

Eye-widening is apparently _another_ involuntary response—LittleBig Glory’s learning that firsthand, and simultaneous with every drop of blood draining from her face in a flash. A wave of dizziness hits a moment later, and darkness and silence subsume the world.

**Author's Note:**

> **Thanks:**  
  
To 0Rocky41_7> and Zeesqueere. To anyone giving this a read (and hopefully a comment and/or kudo :-).  
  
  
  
**Resources & References for this fic:**  
This “[Dragon Age: Inquisition Playthrough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=103YENxDI28&t=1s).”  
  
"CODE NAME: BUNAN TSOKOLATTE: Bunan’s Qunlat Lexicon."Bunan, Tumblr.com. Last updated September 2, 2018. https://bunan-tsokolatte.tumblr.com/post/114521444583/bunans-qunlat-lexicon  
  
[Dragon Age Wiki](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_Wiki)Dragon Age Wiki  
Wikipedia  
Google  
  
  
  
**Powered by:**  
  
I recycled [my playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDZSuw00OZ3ZXQOgZKEBioNqHDefabmwG) for [By Gaslamp’s Light](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22295593). Bad bug!  
  
  
  
[TUMBLES with the bug](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)! And [PILLOWFORTS with the bug, too](https://www.pillowfort.io/beetle-comma-the)!


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